Commercial air travel is safer than ever, study finds

by Peter Dizikes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Air-traffic controllers working at Heathrow airport in London. A new study by Arnold Barnett, the George Eastman Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, finds that air travel has reached its highest level of safety over the last decade. Credit: NATS-UK

It has never been safer to fly on commercial airlines, according to a new study by an MIT professor that tracks the continued decrease in passenger fatalities around the globe.

The study finds that between 2008 and 2017, airline passenger fatalities fell significantly compared to the previous decade, as measured per individual passenger boardings—essentially the aggregate number of passengers. Globally, that rate is now one death per 7.9 million passenger boardings, compared to one death per 2.7 million boardings during the period 1998-2007, and one death per 1.3 million boardings during 1988-1997.

Going back further, the commercial airline fatality risk was one death per 750,000 boardings during 1978-1987, and one death per 350,000 boardings during 1968-1977.

"The worldwide risk of being killed had been dropping by a factor of two every decade," says Arnold Barnett, an MIT scholar who has published a new paper summarizing the study's results. "Not only has that continued in the last decade, the [latest] improvement is closer to a factor of three. The pace of improvement has not slackened at all even as flying has gotten ever safer and further gains become harder to achieve. That is really quite impressive and is important for people to bear in mind."

The paper, "Aviation Safety: A Whole New World?" was published online this month in Transportation Science. Barnett is the sole author.

The new research also reveals that there is discernible regional variation in airline safety around the world. The study finds that the nations housing the lowest-risk airlines are the U.S., the members of the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. The aggregate fatality risk among those nations was one death per 33.1 million passenger boardings during 2008-2017.

For airlines in a second set of countries, which Barnett terms the "advancing" set with an intermediate risk level, the rate is one death per 7.4 million boardings during 2008-2017. This group—comprising countries that are generally rapidly industrializing and have recently achieved high overall life expectancy and GDP per capita—includes many countries in Asia as well as some countries in South America and the Middle East.

For a third and higher-risk set of developing countries, including some in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the death risk during 2008-2017 was one per 1.2 million passenger boardings—an improvement from one death per 400,000 passenger boardings during 1998-2007.

"The two most conspicuous changes compared to previous decades were sharp improvements in China and in Eastern Europe," says Barnett, who is the George Eastman Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In those places, he notes, had safety achievements in the last decade that were strong even within the lowest-risk group of countries.

Overall, Barnett suggests, the rate of fatalities has declined far faster than public fears about flying.

"Flying has gotten safer and safer," Barnett says. "It's a factor of 10 safer than it was 40 years ago, although I bet anxiety levels have not gone down that much. I think it's good to have the facts."

Barnett is a long-established expert in the field of aviation safety and risk, whose work has helped contextualize accident and safety statistics. Whatever the absolute numbers of air crashes and fatalities may be—and they fluctuate from year to year—Barnett has sought to measure those numbers against the growth of air travel.

To conduct the current study, Barnett used data from a number of sources, including the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network Accident Database. He mostly used data from the World Bank, based on information from the International Civil Aviation Organization, to measure the number of passengers carried, which is now roughly 4 billion per year.

In the paper, Barnett discusses the pros and cons of some alternative metrics that could be used to evaluate commercial air safety, including deaths per flight and deaths per passenger miles traveled. He prefers to use deaths per boarding because, as he writes in the paper, "it literally reflects the fraction of passengers who perished during air journeys."

The new paper also includes historical data showing that even in today's higher-risk areas for commercial aviation, the fatality rate is better, on aggregate, than it was in the leading air-travel countries just a few decades in the past.

"The risk now in the higher-risk countries is basically the risk we used to have 40-50 years ago" in the safest air-travel countries, Barnett notes.

Barnett readily acknowledges that the paper is evaluating the overall numbers, and not providing a causal account of the air-safety trend; he says he welcomes further research attempting to explain the reasons for the continued gains in air safety.

In the paper, Barnett also notes that year-to-year air fatality numbers have notable variation. In 2017, for instance, just 12 people died in the process of air travel, compared to 473 in 2018.

"Even if the overall trend line is [steady], the numbers will bounce up and down," Barnett says. For that reason, he thinks looking at trends a decade at a time is a better way of grasping the full trajectory of commercial airline safety.

On a personal level, Barnett says he understands the kinds of concerns people have about airline travel. He began studying the subject partly because of his own worries about flying, and quips that he was trying to "sublimate my fears in a way that might be publishable."

Those kinds of instinctive fears may well be natural, but Barnett says he hopes that his work can at least build public knowledge about the facts and put them into perspective for people who are afraid of airplane accidents.

"The risk is so low that being afraid to fly is a little like being afraid to go into the supermarket because the ceiling might collapse," Barnett says.

London police to use face scan tech, stoking privacy fears

by Kelvin Chan

In this file photo dated Wednesday, March 28, 2012, a security cctv camera is seen by the Olympic Stadium at the Olympic Park in London. The South Wales police deployed facial recognition surveillance equipment on Sunday Jan. 12, 2020, in a test to monitor crowds arriving for a weekend soccer match in real-time, that is prompting public debate about possible aggressive uses of facial recognition in Western democracies, raising questions about human rights and how the technology may enter people's daily lives in the future. (AP Photo/Sang Tan, FILE)

London police will start using facial recognition cameras to pick out suspects from street crowds in real time, in a major advance for the controversial technology that raises worries about automated surveillance and erosion of privacy rights.

The Metropolitan Police Service said Friday that after a series of trials, the cameras will be put to work within a month in operational deployments of around 5-6 hours at potential crime hotspots. The locations would be chosen based on intelligence but the police did not say where, the number of places, or how many cameras would be deployed.

Real-time crowd surveillance by British police is among the more aggressive uses of facial recognition in wealthy democracies and raises questions about how the technology will enter people's daily lives. Authorities and private companies are eager to use facial recognition but rights groups say it threatens civil liberties and represents an expansion of surveillance.

London's decision to use the technology defies warnings from rights groups, lawmakers and independent experts, Amnesty International researcher Anna Bacciarelli said.

"Facial recognition technology poses a huge threat to human rights, including the rights to privacy, non-discrimination, freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly," Bacciarelli said.

London police said the facial recognition system, which runs on technology from Japan's NEC, looks for faces in crowds to see if they match any on "watchlists" of up to 2,500 people wanted for serious and violent offences, including gun and knife crimes and child sexual exploitation.

"As a modern police force, I believe that we have a duty to use new technologies to keep people safe in London," Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave said in a statement.

The British have long become accustomed to video surveillance, with cameras used in public spaces for decades by security forces fighting terror threats. Real-time monitoring will put that tolerance to the test.

London is the sixth most monitored city in the world, with nearly 628,000 surveillance cameras, according to a report by Comparitech.

London's move comes after a British High Court ruling last year cleared a similar deployment by South Wales police, which has been using it since 2017 to monitor big events like soccer games, royal visits and airshows. That system deleted people's biometric data automatically after scanning.

Britain's privacy commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, who had warned police not to take that ruling as a blanket approval, struck a cautious tone on Friday.

She said that while London police have stated they're putting safeguards and transparency in place to protect privacy and human rights, "it is difficult to comment further on this until we have an actual deployment and we are able to scrutinize the details of that deployment."

Signs will warn passersby about the cameras and officers will pass out leaflets with more information, the police said, adding that the system isn't linked to any other surveillance systems.

London police previously carried out a series of trial deployments that they say identified 7 out of 10 wanted suspects who walked past the camera while only incorrectly flagging up 1 in 1,000 people. But an independent review last year by University of Essex professors questioned that, saying the trials raised concerns about their legal basis and the equipment's accuracy, with only 8 of 42 matches verified as correct.

Pete Fussey, a University of Essex professor who co-authored the report, said NEC has upgraded its algorithm since then, but there's evidence that the technology isn't 100% accurate, pointing to a recent U.S. government lab's test of nearly 200 algorithms that found most have ethnic bias.

"If you're using the algorithm you should be aware of its shortcomings," he said. "It's vanishingly unlikely that NEC's algorithm will be effective across all ethnic categories."

UK police use of facial recognition tests public's tolerance

Bosses using tech to spy on staff is becoming the norm, so here's a realistic way of handling it

by Douglas Bamford, The Conversation

Gotcha. Credit: Lightspring

Workplace surveillance sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but we are having to get used to it. In a sign of the times, the European Court of Human Rights has just ruled that a supermarket in Barcelona was entitled to fire employees after catching them stealing on CCTV cameras that they didn't know were installed. This overturned a decision by the court's lower chamber that the cameras had breached the employees' human rights.

Yet hidden cameras are almost quaint compared to some of the ways in which employers are now monitoring their staff. They are resorting to everything from software that digitally scans workers' emails to smart name badges that track their whereabouts. There are even head scanners in development that can monitor workers' levels of concentration. According to one recent analysis, around half of employers are using some form of non-traditional surveillance on staff, and the numbers are growing fast.

Even tech employees are getting worried—witness Google workers recently accusing their employer of building a browser extension to automatically notify managers about anyone attempting to arrange staff meetings. They claimed that it was intended to prevent staff from potentially trying to form a union. The company denied the accusations.

But if high-tech workplace surveillance is looking more and more unavoidable, what should we do about it? Before we go any further down this road, it's time to weigh up the possibilities.

The Man is everywhere

Many fear that technologies like wearable tech, digital cameras and artificial intelligence are turbocharging staff monitoring. Some would probably ban such practices outright. After all, most of us want to be free to do our work as we see fit. Yet in reality, employers have always monitored how workers perform. Why ban the new technology and not all such practices? The obvious answer is that we can't: if all forms of monitoring were banned, how would organizations even function?

Even just to repel the newer forms of workplace surveillance will require huge sustained pressure on politicians and corporations. This seems unlikely, particularly when the culture is already established: most of us are willing to share our lives with the world via social media and allow tech corporations to harvest the data in exchange.

One compromise might be to only allow workplace surveillance where workers opt in. But what would stop employers from insisting that workers sign a consent form as a requirement of the job? You could ban companies from making this mandatory, but it probably wouldn't work. Workers would still fear that not signing would reduce their job security and cause them to miss out on promotions and other opportunities.

What about regulating the technology? Allowing it only to enhance employee wellbeing and not to monitor productivity, for instance. Such rules might be possible, but they will mean difficult compromises. One option would be to allow employees access to whatever information is gathered on them, for example.

On balance, well designed regulations and constant vigilance against abuses and workers' rights being eroded is probably about the best we can hope for. Just as you can't uninvent the atom bomb, you can't easily put surveillance technology back in its box. If this sounds very stoical, it is also worth reflecting on a few possible consolations.

Big Brother is paying you. Credit: Brian A Jackson

Diamonds in the dirt?

The firms that develop surveillance software often emphasize the potential for tracking employer wellbeing. We shouldn't dismiss this too easily. Is it possible that it could catch instances where workers are unhappy or depressed and enable an employer to react appropriately, for example? Could it even spot someone who is suicidal and help instigate a crucial intervention?

Equally, some uses of new technology might actually be less objectionable than existing practices. If AI is being used to monitor your facial expressions or to gauge your attitude from the tone of your voice, it might have fewer biases than a human manager. It won't make judgments because it is feeling threatened or doesn't like you and it certainly won't be lecherous towards you. It might just be that workers can learn to play these things to their advantage.

Also, let's not forget that the main aim of monitoring employees is to make them more productive. People might actually be willing to sign up for some form of high-tech monitoring if they knew it was likely to improve their productivity. If it showed them ways to make more money for every hour they worked, for example, that might be attractive to them. There might be an analogy here in the ways in which athletes use different monitors to improve their performance.

If people were made more productive in enough workplaces, it should increase national and even global economic productivity. This is what drives economic growth. It should then lead to higher pay, greater profits and more reinvestment in jobs and innovation.

You might counter that these economic gains will be concentrated towards the few, trickling up rather than down. The rest of us might just feel more observed and more stressed. This is certainly a risk. But maybe it could be mitigated if the monitoring also underpinned a more progressive tax system that redistributed the gains from this technology to lower paid workers.

I have argued elsewhere that it would be better to tax people according to their hourly income than their annual earnings. For reasons I explain here, it would allow you to pay higher wages to lower paid workers and to put a greater share of the tax burden on higher paid workers without taking away their incentive to work harder.

One of the main objections to such a system is that it's hard to check whether everyone is working the number of hours that they claim. Government access to workplace surveillance data could be used to verify this. And this takes me back to my broader point: if we can't beat the rise of employee surveillance, we must find ways to make the best of it instead. The private sector tends to lead the way in developing and exploiting technology for profit; workplace surveillance could be harnessed to distribute economic gains more equitably.

Why bosses should let employees surf the web at work

Nonprofits worry sale of dot-org universe will raise costs

by Anick Jesdanun and Brian Melley

In this June 13, 2012, file photo, Rod Beckstrom, president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), points from behind a podium during a speech in London on expanding the number of domain name suffixes. The company that controls the dot-org online universe is putting the registry of domain names up for sale. (AP Photo/Tim Hales, File)

The company that controls the dot-org online universe is putting the registry of domain names up for sale, and the nonprofits that often use the suffix in their websites are raising concerns about the move.

About 15 people protested Friday outside the Los Angeles headquarters of the regulatory body for domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is meeting this weekend and is expected to rule by mid-February on plans by private-equity firm Ethos Capital to buy the Public Interest Registry for $1.1 billion.

The protesters carried signs saying "Save Dot Org" and chanted "ICANN, you can, stop the sale."
They planned to give 34,000 signatures objecting to the sale to a board member. Around 700 organizations such as Greenpeace, Sierra Club, YMCA, YWCA and Girl Scouts of America also oppose the sale, protesters said.

Opponents are concerned the cost of registering a dot-org website will skyrocket, and they worry about the potential loss of freedoms of speech and expression if the registry is in the wrong hands.

"It's easy to put two and two together and see the concern that economic or other pressures could push this new for-profit PIR to make decisions that are detrimental to nonprofits," said Elliot Harmon, activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Ethos Capital and the Internet Society, which runs the registry now, said those concerns are misplaced and the sale is being misunderstood.

The two groups said in a statement that prices will remain low, the registry's managers will stay in place and the infusion of capital will ensure the long-term growth of dot-org.

They also rejected assertions that online content would be spied on and censored.

"This notion is baseless and, frankly, a demonstration of the type of speculation that has taken the discussion surrounding the future of .ORG irresponsibly out of context," the statement said. "Ethos and PIR take freedom of expression very seriously, and the registry's commitment to free speech will continue unabated."

Domain names such as apnews.com have historically been used by computers to find websites and send email, and their value grew as companies and groups adopted them for branding. The Associated Press, a nonprofit, also uses a dot-org domain, ap.org.

Speculators have registered a variety of names under popular domain suffixes such as dot-com and dot-org, and an easy-to-remember name can fetch millions of dollars in the resell market. Owners of popular suffixes can collect hundreds of millions of dollars a year in registration fees.


Though domain names are less prominent these days as more people reach websites using search engines and apps, they are still important for email addresses, billboards and other non-digital advertising.

The dot-org suffix has the distinction of being one of the original domains created in the mid-1980s.

Since 2003, dot-org has been managed by the Public Interest Registry at the Internet Society, a nonprofit founded by many of the internet's early engineers and scientists. In that role, the registry collects annual fees of about $10 from each of the more than 10 million dot-org names registered worldwide.

The Internet Society uses some of that money to finance its advocacy and administrative programs, which include creating technical standards for the internet.

It said proceeds from the sale will fund an endowment to provide more diversified and sustainable resources long term. The group described Ethos Capital as "a mission-driven firm" committed to continuing the registry's operations.

The investment firm's executives include a former senior vice president at the regulatory body for ICANN.

Although dot-org is often associated with nonprofit organizations, it can by registered by anyone, including for-profit corporations and individuals. That won't change with a new, for-profit owner.

But critics worry that a for-profit owner will be more likely than a nonprofit to raise registration fees. The sale announcement said nothing about prices, and a subsequent blog post mentions only that Ethos has committed to limiting increases to 10% a year—the same cap that had been in place until ICANN lifted it in June 2019.

Critics also fear a new owner could change policies and reduce protections for domain name owners, including non-governmental organizations that operate in authoritarian countries. A website can suddenly become unreachable, for instance, if the suffix owner decides to suspend a registration.

Several advocacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, wrote a letter to the Internet Society insisting that dot-org "be managed by a leader that puts the needs of NGOs over profits."

The suffix has been in for-profit hands before. Before the Public Interest Registry, Verisign Inc. and its predecessor, Network Solutions, managed dot-org, along with dot-com and dot-net.


© 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Capitalism and the internet: It's time we understood the digital economy

by Brian Armstrong, The Conversation

The digital economy includes small holder farmers being able to access finance on a mobile device without having to go to a bank. Credit: Shutterstock

The digital economy has been getting a lot of attention, with increasingly strong headlines offering apocalyptic as well as breathtakingly exciting scenarios. Some warn of job losses due to automation, some wonder at the things digital technology can do. And then there's real skepticism about whether this will translate into delivering to people who need it most.

With all of this discussion, however, there is seldom an explanation of what the digital economy actually is. What makes it different from the traditional economy? Why we should care about it?

The digital economy is a term that captures the impact of digital technology on patterns of production and consumption. This includes how goods and services are marketed, traded and paid for.

The term evolved from the 1990s, when the focus was on the impact of the internet on the economy. This was extended to include the emergence of new types of digitally-oriented firms and the production of new technologies.

Today the term encompasses a dizzying array of technologies and their application. This includes artificial intelligence, the internet of things, augmented and virtual reality, cloud computing, blockchain, robotics and autonomous vehicles.

The digital economy is now recognised to include all parts of the economy that exploit technological change that leads to markets, business models and day-to-day operations being transformed. So it covers everything from traditional technology, media and telecoms sectors through to new digital sectors. These include e-commerce, digital banking, and even "traditional" sectors like agriculture or mining or manufacturing that are being affected by the application of emerging technologies.

Understanding these dynamics has become non-negotiable. The digital economy will, soon, become the ordinary economy as the uptake—and application—of digital technologies in every sector in the world grows.

I have been part of a team of researchers looking at what this means for a society like South Africa. In particular, we have been focused on looking at what the proliferation of the digital economy means for inclusion—making sure that everyone can access it—and economic opportunities.

But the first step was to get absolutely clarity on what this multifaceted phenomenon is.

The digital core

At the center of the digital economy is a "digital core." This includes the providers of physical technologies like semiconductors and processors, the devices they enable like computers and smartphones, the software and algorithms which run on them, and the enabling infrastructure these devices use like the internet and telecoms networks.

This is followed by "digital providers." These are the parties that use these technologies to provide digital products and services like mobile payments, e-commerce platforms or machine learning solutions.

Lastly, there are the "digital applications." This covers organizations that use the products and services of digital providers to transform the way they go about their business. Examples include virtual banks, digital media, and e-government services.

A concrete example helps paint the pictures. Consider a typical agriculture value chain: a smallholder farmer needs inputs (like financing) to produce and then sell crops to, say, processors or directly to consumers. Today smallholders can obtain financing through their mobile phones from digital financial services providers rather than physically visiting a bank. These digital financial services are able to assess the risk of lending to the farmer by building a profile using AI algorithms in conjunction with alternative data sets, such as mobile phone usage or satellite farm imagery.

Then there are the mobile applications that can help farmers produce better crops. They can provide advice on the best time for planting, soil quality and dealing with pests. It means that a farmer no longer has to rely on face-to-face advice from friends or agro-dealers.

Another example in the agriculture arena is the ability of farmers to rent tractors. Known as asset-sharing platforms, these enable farmers to gain access to a tractor they wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford.

Digital versus traditional

So what makes the digital economy different to the traditional economy?

Firstly, digital technologies allow firms to do their business differently as well as more efficiently and cost-effectively. They also open up a host of new possibilities. Take navigation apps. No team of people would ever be able to provide real time, traffic-aware navigation in the way that smartphone apps do.

This means that products and services can be offered to more consumers, particularly those who couldn't be served before.

Secondly, these effects are giving rise to entirely new market structures that remove, among other things, transaction costs in traditional markets. The best example of this is the rise of digital platforms such as Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. These companies connect market participants together in a virtual world. They reveal optimal prices and generate trust between strangers in new ways.

Lastly, the digital economy is fueled by—and generates—enormous amounts of data. Traditionally when we made purchases in a brick-and-mortar store using cash, no-one was keeping an account of our personal consumption or financial transactions on a large scale. Now, ordering online and paying electronically means that many of our consumption and financial transactions generate electronic data which is recorded and held by someone.

The collation and analysis of this data provides enormous opportunities—and risks—to transform how a range of economic activities are performed.

The digital economy is with us. Yet the boundaries between digital and traditional are blurring as technological change permeates every facet of of modern life. We all need to understand the nature of this change to be able to respond at every level: society, corporate and personal.

The South Africa in the Digital Age initiative has been convened by Genesis Analytics in partnership with the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Pathways for Prosperity Commission at Oxford University. A multi-stakeholder initiative, it has developed a forward-looking digital economy strategy for the country.

SEE CREATING A NEW WORLD IN THE SHELL OF THE OLD 

GHOST GUNS

Coalition of states sue over rules governing 3-D-printed guns

by Michael Balsamo and Chris Grygiel

Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a federal regulation that could allow blueprints for making guns on 3D printers to be posted on the internet.

New York Attorney General Tish James, who helped lead the coalition of state attorneys general, argued that posting the blueprints would allow anyone to go online and use the downloadable files to create unregistered and untraceable assault-style weapons that could be difficult to detect.

The lawsuit, joined by California, Washington and 17 other states, was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. It is likely to reignite a fierce debate over the use of 3D-printed firearms and is the latest in a series of attempts by state law enforcement officials to block the Trump administration from easing the accessibility of the blueprints.

Proponents have argued there is a constitutional right to publish the material, but critics counter that making the blueprints readily accessible online could lead to an increase in gun violence and put weapons in the hands of criminals who are legally prohibited from owning them.

Washington state's attorney general Bob Ferguson said a previous multi-state lawsuit led a federal judge last year to strike down the administration's earlier attempt to allow the files to be distributed.

"Why is the Trump administration working so hard to allow domestic abusers, felons and terrorists access to untraceable, undetectable 3D-printed guns?" Ferguson said in a statement.

For years, law enforcement officials have been trying to draw attention to the dangers posed by the so-called ghost guns, which contain no registration numbers that could be used to trace them.

A federal judge in November blocked an earlier attempt by the Trump administration to allow the files to be released online, arguing that the government had violated the law on procedural grounds. But the administration published formal rules on Thursday that transfer the regulation of 3D-printed guns from the State Department to the Commerce Department, which could open the door to making the blueprints available online.

The state attorneys general argue the government is breaking the law and say such deregulation will "make it far easier for individuals ineligible to possess firearms under state or federal law to obtain a deadly weapon without undergoing a background check," according to the lawsuit. They also argue that the Commerce Department lacks the power to properly regulate 3D-printed guns.

"Ghost Guns endanger every single one of us," James said in a statement. "While the president and his Administration know these homemade weapons pose an imminent threat, he continues to cater to the gun lobby—risking the lives of millions of Americans."

In 2015, Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed sued the federal government after it told him to remove online blueprints of a 3D-printed gun. The State Department reached a settlement with the company in 2018 and removed the 3D gun-making plans from a list of weapons or technical data that are not allowed to be exported. But a coalition of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to stop the maneuver, arguing that undetectable plastic guns pose a national security risk.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit filed Thursday.

In addition to Washington, California and New York, the states suing are: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia as well as the District of Columbia.

"We successfully challenged the Trump administration's first reckless attempt, and we will continue to fight against this latest attack on the safety of our communities,'' California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

Greece: Government websites hit by cyberattack

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The Greek government said Friday that the official state websites of the prime minister, the national police and fire service and several important ministries were briefly disabled by a cyberattack but have been restored.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said early Friday that the distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attack "led to the malfunction of certain websites." He said "countermeasures" had been successfully implemented, but gave no further details.

Along with the prime minister's website, targets in the attack late Thursday included the websites of the ministries of public order, interior, foreign affairs, and merchant marine, as well as the Greek Police and Fire Service.

It was the second cyberattack against government websites in less than a week. Responsibility for the first attack was claimed in an online post by a group of hackers who purported to be from Turkey. Greek officials have not commented on whether they consider that claim to be true.

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The skin of the earth is home to pac-man-like protists

by Beth King, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Dayana Agudo, lab manager in staff scientist Ben Turner's soil lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Credit: STRI

Pac-Man, the open-mouthed face of the most successful arcade game ever, is much more well-known than any of the one-celled organisms called protists, at least among people over 30. But the first study to characterize protists in soils from around the world—co-authored by Smithsonian scientists—found that the most common groups of soil protists behave exactly like Pac-Man: moving through the soil matrix, gobbling up bacteria. Their results are published in Science Advances.

"As part of a bigger project to understand all of the microbes in soil we are characterizing bacteria and fungi, but also a lesser-known, but equally important group called protists," said Angela Oliverio, former STRI intern and lead author on the paper with professor Noah Fierer and post-doctoral fellow Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo at the University of Colorado, Boulder; staff scientist Ben Turner at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama; researcher Stefan Geisen at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and professor Fernando Maestre at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and the Universidad de Alicante, Spain.

Protists reproduce quickly and are probably much more responsive to climate change than larger forms of life. Like the cartoon character Sheldon Plankton in Spongebob Squarepants, protists are not plants, animals or fungi. They are single-celled organisms but, unlike bacteria, they have a nucleus. They move through water using whip-like flagellae and tiny hairs called cilia. Some of the nastier protists cause sleeping sickness, malaria and red tide, but nearly all play important, if mysterious, roles in the energy- and nutrient-trading relationships that connect ecosystems.

Even small soil samples contain vast numbers of microorganisms. Soil samples from different layers of soil wait to be analyzed in staff scientist Ben Turner's lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Credit: STRI

Identifying millions of miniscule protists in soil used to be impossible, but recently-developed technology to classify protists based on their genetic code makes it possible to characterize them on a large scale. The team sequenced the 18S ribosomal RNA studied from soil samples from across six continents to better understand the ecological roles of the protists in the below-ground ecosystem.

Soils collected at sites with high and low rainfall make it possible how the presence of water changes the soil microbiome. Ben Turner, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in a soil profile pit on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Credit: stri

They discovered that most of the protists are the Pac-Man type that consume other, smaller organisms. But in tropical soils, a larger number of protists were parasites, living inside other organisms. In desert soils, there were more protists capable of photosynthesizing and using sunlight directly as an energy source. The best predictor of what types of protists exist in a sample is the annual precipitation at the site. This may seem intuitive because protists depend on water to move, but it was a surprise, since soil acidity, rather than precipitation, is what usually predicts which bacteria and fungi are in soil.

"Soils are home to an astonishing diversity of organisms, the lives of which we are only beginning to understand," said Ben Turner, STRI staff scientist and co-author of the study. "Soil protists are an understudied group, so this work provides a foundation for future research on their ecology in ecosystems worldwide.

Sniffing out your dinner in the dark: How miniature predators get their favourite soil bacteria

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More information: Angela M. Oliverio et al, The global-scale distributions of soil protists and their contributions to belowground systems, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax8787

Journal information: Science Advances 

Opioid dependence found to permanently change brains of rats

by University of California - San Diego

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Approximately one-quarter of patients who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them, with five to 10 percent developing an opioid use disorder or addiction. In a new study, published Jan. 14, 2020 in PNAS, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that opioid dependence produced permanent changes in the brains of rats.

More specifically, researchers reported that dependence on oxycodone, a potent opioid painkiller, led to permanent neuro-adaptations of the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) at the level of the nociceptin system, a brainwide network that modulates transmission of pain. Downregulation or suppression of the nociceptin system in the CeA led to an increase in activation of GABA receptors in rats highly addicted to opioids. The discovery is consistent with previous findings reporting CeA neuroa-daptations after cocaine and alcohol dependence.

When researchers restored nociceptin levels in the CeA, it resulted in normalization of GABAergic transmission and a reduction of the rats' opioid consumption.

"This suggests the nociceptin system may be a promising target for the treatment of opioid use disorder," said senior author Giordano de Guglielmo, PharmD, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

"To reveal the role of nociceptin in the central nucleus of the amygdala, we used a multidisciplinary approach with behavioral models, molecular biology and electrophysiology," said first author Marsida Kallupi, PharmD, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "That allowed us to conclude that downregulation of this peptide may be partially responsible for excessive opioid addiction-like behaviors."

Currently, opioid maintenance therapy is the first-line treatment for opioid dependence, which involves using alternative, less damaging medications, such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone. These three drugs are the only treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but all have limitations, either because they act against different receptors, pose safety concerns or are less effective due to the need for strict adherence to treatment.

Both methadone and buprenorphine target mu-opioid receptors in the brain. The new research builds upon past behavioral and neurochemical studies suggesting the nociceptin system and its receptors (NOP) are also involved in opioid tolerance and reward, addiction to multiple drugs and modulation of stress. Interestingly, while the research demonstrates that NOP is implicated in development of opioid dependence, it conversely blocks effects of morphine-based opioids.

De Guglielmo said several efforts are already underway testing small molecule drugs that target the nociception system, and have produced positive effects in reducing alcohol-seeking behaviors and biology in rats. The new findings indicate they may offer similar potential therapeutic benefit for opioid addiction.

Every day, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids. Two out of three drug overdose deaths involve an opioid. From 1999 to 2017, the last year for which data is available, almost 400,000 Americans lost their lives to opioids, with 47,600 fatal overdoses in 2017 alone. It's estimated 2.1 million Americans have an opioid use disorder.

Mindfulness may reduce opioid cravings, study finds

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More information: Marsida Kallupi et al, Nociceptin attenuates the escalation of oxycodone self-administration by normalizing CeA–GABA transmission in highly addicted rats, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915143117

Facebook AI gives maps the brushoff in helping robots find the way

Who needs maps? Facebook has scored an impressive feat involving AI that can navigate without any map.
JUST LIKE ANY GUY

Rolls-Royce factory plan puts nuclear reactors on mini scale

by Nancy Cohen , Tech Xplore

Credit: Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce plans on building mini nuclear reactors, which could be in operation by 2029. They are less the size of traditional nuclear reactors and they do not take as many years to build.

How mini is that? Roger Harrabin and Katie Prescott reporting in the BBC: "They are about 1.5 acres in size - sitting in a 10-acre space. That is a 16th of the size of a major power station such as Hinkley Point."

The company has stated that this is a low-cost alternative for a global market. "With a modular design that's built in a factory, it can improve certainty of delivery, reduce complexity, optimize safety."

Currently, they said, "nuclear power stations are large scale sites that typically cover an area of over 400,000m2. This is because traditionally once a company has gone through the time and expense of securing an appropriate site, it was more cost effective to build as much capacity on that site as possible. Construction of these sites can take years to complete and their complexity can lead to significant delays and escalating costs."

Why are they building them, you might ask? These would serve as nuclear reactors to generate power in the UK, said designboom.

They would be delivered "in chunks," said Forbes, via trucks.

So, we're looking at plans for nuclear power stations, factory-built, in the UK, that are built and delivered in parts.

"At every point in the development of our UK SMR solution, we have sought to take a modular approach to drive down the cost of electricity to as low as practically possible," Rolls-Royce said on its SMR topic .

Actually, reported the BBC, "Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium to build small modular reactors (SMRs) and install them in former nuclear sites in Cumbria or in Wales. Ultimately, the company thinks it will build between 10 and 15 of the stations in the UK."

The news attracted a clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Steven Novella, who wrote about it in NeuroLogicaBlog. He confessed his mood in the opener. "What do you call it when you are both excited and pessimistic about something at the same time?"

"Actually," he wrote, "small nuclear reactors are not new. We have been using them on nuclear submarines and other vessels for years. What is new is commercial SMRs for grid power."

Why the mixed feelings of being excited, yet pessimistic? After making an argument for what benefits nuclear brings to the energy future, he commented: "...it is technically possible to achieve zero carbon without nuclear, it's just practically not feasible. Now we are getting to the point where I am pessimistic...we have two main political parties, one largely ignored the science on global warming, and the other largely ignores the science on nuclear energy."

Novella noted political figures who were weak on nuclear, and would either wean off or build any new plants, "letting existing plants sunset."

Novella said that "At this point we should explore and pursue every option, and let the chips fall where they may. Taking nuclear off the table is extremely risky, with a very small chance of allowing us to meet even the most conservative climate goals. But the political will is just not there.

"I have to hope that politicians say what they think they need to say, but then consult experts and do the right thing behind the scenes. Or – private companies take matters into their own hands. If Rolls-Royce, for example, successfully develops a cost-effective SMR that works, it will likely be used. Build it and they will come."

A recent assessment of where nuclear power as an energy source stands was made in the BBC report. It pointed out that (1) there were those who think the UK should quit nuclear power altogether (2) those who say the country should focus on cheaper renewable energy instead and (3) environmentalists, divided over nuclear power, "with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive, while others say that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 all technologies are needed."

Gaurav Sharma in Forbes explored costs and potential opportunities.

"According to a feasibility study conducted by the U.K.'s National Nuclear Laboratory, there is an estimated global market of up to £400 billion ($525 billion) for energy that cannot, in all circumstances, be met by large scale nuclear reactors and so presents a real opportunity for SMRs. Rolls-Royce can certainly count on a slice of that if things go according to plan."

The BBC quoted Paul Stein, Rolls-Royce CTO. "The trick is to have prefabricated parts where we use advanced digital welding methods and robotic assembly and then parts are shipped to site and bolted together."

TRIGGER WARNING FOR ARACHNOPHOBES

What do Chinese opera masks and spiders have in common? A lot, as it turns out.

by Michael Miller, University of Cincinnati

Chinese opera masks or Jing masks feature unique colors and patterns that give the audience clues about a character's motives, character or virtue. Credit: Photo/Wikimedia Commons

To better understand how animals like spiders communicate with pattern and color, a University of Cincinnati biology student is turning to ancient dramatic art.

Biology doctoral student Jenny Yi-Ti Sung is studying how Beijing operas that date back thousands of years convey details about motivation and character to their audiences through the performers' colorful masks.

Like many jumping spiders, Chinese opera masks, or Jing masks, have unique patterns and colors that convey information to their intended audience. For spiders, the unique characteristics broadcast species, sex or even romantic intentions to possible mates. In Chinese opera, the masks help the audience instantly recognize heroes, villains, allies, foes and other supporting characters amid the frenetic action on stage.

"I'm interested in understanding how male spiders might use their patterns and colors to tell a female spider they're the same species and are a viable mate," Sung said. "I saw a parallel in Chinese opera masks. How do these visual patterns evolve to tell a specific identity?"

Sung presented her ongoing project to the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology conference in January. She is looking at whether the Jing masks are more alike or different within a particular opera compared to masks in unrelated operas.

"If the masks are in the same story, it follows that they are under selection for distinctiveness. So, they should show greater differences compared to masks in another opera," she said.

Sung examined 76 masks painted by artist Steve Lu in his 1968 book "Face Painting in Chinese Opera." Sung digitally scanned and resized the images for uniformity for her computer analysis.

Villains are often depicted in white with striking patterns. The hero traditionally wears a red mask with fewer adornments. 

"He's very virtuous. He doesn't have many features on his face, which suggests he's calm, composed and mature," Sung said.

UC biology student Jenny Yi-Ting Sung holds up a Hyllus keratodes, a Singapore spider, in a biology lab. Credit: Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services

Most have symmetrical features that accentuate the character's mood or personality.

"It's rare for characters to have asymmetrical features. But that might be a nod to the audience that this character can't be trusted," she said.

Other recurring archetypes are the loyal friend and the Monkey King, which features a flat monkey-shaped nose and round muzzle.

"It's not just the face but the costume and performance. He jumps around the stage like a monkey," Sung said.

Sung subjected 76 masks to what's called an eigenface analysis, a computerized breakdown that can identify the most common or unique characteristics of faces. The analysis identified the facial features that were most similar or different in the 76 examples.

Sung's computer analysis also generated a grayscale version of the mean face (as in arithmetic mean rather than mean-looking) depicted in the 76 masks. The mean face features a patterned nose and forehead, heavily shadowed eyes and shaded mouth.

"This is what the computer considers the average of all 76 masks after doing some cool math kung fu, the covariance that shows the differences between the masks," Sung said.

Next, Sung plans to plot each mask to the eigenface dimensions and calculate Euclidean distances to investigate whether the masks that appear in the same opera have more variation than those in unrelated operas. This would suggest it's more important in Chinese opera to differentiate characters in the same story as opposed to characters in different stories, Sung said. 

Sung said she has gotten positive feedback on her novel approach so far from peers at conferences.

The faces of jumping spiders have unique colors and patterns, much like Chinese opera masks. Credit: Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services

"This is a delightful marriage of cultural interest and heritage with scientific interest in evolutionary biology," said Nathan Morehouse, an associate professor of biology at UC and Sung's advisor. "I think it's wonderful."

Facial patterns have recurring biological significance across species, Morehouse said.

"Jumping spiders have lots of colors and patterns on their faces that communicate information about what species they are, what sex they are and whether they're a good mate," he said.

Besides spiders, facial pattern recognition is found in many other animals, including a genus of primates called guenons. Many of these African monkeys share the same habitats where it would be advantageous to distinguish members of the same species at a distance, Morehouse said.

"When they live in mixed-species communities, their facial patterns evolve to be distinct so they can recognize each other," Morehouse said.

UC biology student Jenny Yi-Ting Sung is studying the parallels between Chinese opera masks and evolutionary divergence. She subjected 76 sample masks to an eigenface analysis to identify similarities. Credit: Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services

Morehouse said he applauds Sung's creative approach to a traditional biological discussion.

"In our lab we're always challenging ourselves to think creatively about the questions we ask," he said about the Morehouse Lab on the UC Uptown campus. "I think it enriches science and opens up new ways of thinking about things."

Sung said she hopes the study will shed light on evolutionary divergence, the fork in the road where members of the same species head in different genetic directions.

"Of course, there's no punishment to the audience if they don't recognize the faces properly. But in the wild, you'd get eaten," she said.